This is a Story from Way Back When
by raedbard
Summary: SLASH: Jed reminisces about his friend and an old fight that never really stopped. further discourse on the vexed topic of better angels follows and becomes a eulogy for the Bartlet legacy, and for Toby.


**Title:** This is A Story from Way Back When  
**Author:** Raedbard  
**Fandom:** _The West Wing_  
**Pairing:** Toby/Jed  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Word Count:** c. 2700  
**Disclaimer:** I don't pretend to be Aaron Sorkin or John Wells. I just like to borrow their characters and make them do morally reprehensible things to each other.  
**Timeline/Spoilers** Undetermined timeline, no spoilers

**Summary: **Jed reminisces about his friend and an old fight that never really stopped. further discourse on the vexed topic of better angels follows and becomes a eulogy for the Bartlet legacy, and for Toby.

**This is A Story from Way Back When**

This is a story from when Toby and I were ... well, things that my granddaughter Annie, now at the great old age of twenty-two, will never be allowed to hear of. He swore me to secrecy, but ... well, I'm confident you won't tell. And he wouldn't mind so much now.

He was always my left hand man. You know that our word 'sinister' comes from the Latin, sinister, meaning 'left' or 'left-handed'? Ah, see - you are rolling your eyes at me, but it's true. Toby would appreciate the symbolism, if not the sentiment. But consider this: where Leo is everything sensible and plain-spoken - the guy on my right hand, Toby was the devil who whispers in my ear. He would say, and did, that he kept me straight; that he was on the side of the angels, but I'm not, and never have been, quite so sure.

There was so much anger in him, I can't tell you - although I shall. And to continue the thing in medias res: Toby got sharper when he was angry. Those little motions: the hand-waving; that little bobbing on the balls of his feet thing he did; the way he smoothed down his tie - all of those little gestures became channels for his feelings, and then, in the middle of his anger, soft touches became savage strokes. I gave him plenty to be angry about, I suppose, and I was pretty angry too - he brings that out of me. We made an interesting team.

We never got through that fight, really - you know the one I mean. I'm sorry, was that a non-sequitur? See if you can keep up. I've got a Latin dictionary here, someplace ...

Anyway. He asked me afterwards, when we'd won, what it was I was really angry about. His grievances had been obvious to both of us, professional and personal both - and it was personal by then. And I couldn't tell him, not honestly. He came to me, and touched my cheek just like Abbey might. 

He said: Are you okay? I never asked.

I think I nodded. I couldn''t find any appropriate words.

He smiled, somewhere inside the beard, and touched my tie with the tips of his fingers, making that same smoothing gesture I was talking about before. I couldn't think what to do with my hands at all.

He said: You're not going to ask me to play chess?

I laughed, somehow. No, I said, we're not playing chess now.

So what are we doing? he asks.

I've never known, Toby, I said. It's you that always seems to have the answers, there. And I thought 'Sigmund' kinda suited you.

It was true, too. He used to get this look - his eyes went black, slick. I always wondered if those were the moments when he was composing in his head, and suddenly a polished stream of rhetoric delivered by a dour, bearded man in a mis-matched suit would suddenly fill my house, and my heart. It sometimes happened that way with him - well, you know. You heard the second Inaugural.

It's not over, he said, in that quiet, level voice that means business, or trouble. Usually both, and usually for me.

Actually, Toby, said I, it is. One more term is all I've got.

He said, still quiet: No, it's not, Jed.

You talking about legacy now? I said, and I was then, of course, using my ironic voice. I point that fact out in order that you not mistake it for my regular voice. He just looked at me, and so I go to my second line of defence. We do the job, Toby, I said. We do what we think is right, and then history decides; history decrees.

But we can help it on it's way, he said. And we're not doing that right now.

What do you want from me, Toby? I asked him, as straight-out as my best I Am the President voice will allow, and then we were having that same fight again and the fact that his face was two inches from mine and my fingers were in his belt-loops didn't mean a damn thing.

You have to take the step, Jed. You have to - and here he shrugged, waved a hand in the air next to my head - hear the angels.

You perhaps remember the angels speech? Good speech, and off the cuff too - unrehearsed and from his heart. And it stayed with me for days, singing in my head, playing over and over in my left ear. Toby had rhythm and cadence, take it from one who knows. But, back to my story:

And they're singing in the key of Toby Ziegler? I said, hating the sound my voice made against his face.

He shrugged again. I'm just your voice, Jed. I'm not the angel, I'm just the guy sitting here, with a pen in his hand, thinking: hey - I wanna get me some of that. I want other people to know that they can buy in too. Only, I'm not sure what I'm getting anymore. I'm not sure what I'm selling, or who I'm selling it to. I don't know - and here another, smaller shrug - what you want me to say.

He finished that speech, one of his better impromptu orations, and he gave me this tiny little smile. A shrug of his mouth, a lowering of his eyes - not the slick stare of moments before.

I think I said his name, just loud enough. I remember that I took my fingers out of his belt loops and I stroked his face - cupped it in my hand, stroked his cheek and the black line of his beard, then just starting to fade into grey, with my thumb.

He stood there, watching me, his face as unreadable as ever. And he said: Don't try to make this about us, Jed.

That, as you will already know, was when I started to get angry. He used to say those things just as I got comfortable, just as I thought I might have begun the up-curve - starting to win, you know? Anyway, he picked his moment that time.

I'm not sure, I said, that there is a way to separate the two things out, Toby.

His eyes had gone dark by the time I heard: I can start calling you 'Mr. President' again, if you'd prefer.

Eventually, I said coldly, you're going to have to relinquish this idea of Presidential schizophrenia you've thrust on me, Toby. I'm the man, not the office.

He said, his voice starting to rise: No, no - you're not. You're the President for every day of these eight years. Every day, and every night, no matter where you are or whose bed you're in. It never goes away, and it never stops.

Until I die, I said, which I'm putting serious thought behind right now.

Out of nowhere, it seemed at the time, he said: It's such a small step, Jed. And his voice had fallen low again, and his eyes were brighter - he was shining, almost. The promises you've made, and the things you've done - the things you've delivered on - they're there and they're good, but they aren't forever. You can't add them up and find out that the total comes to a legacy. That's something you hold in your hands, something you shape. Something that comes out of dreams. And you're letting them slip by.

I'm no genius, Toby, I said, all my anger gone. Not the kind that matters.

He said: You don't have to be.

I carried on, like I hadn't heard him: And I don't always know how to do the right thing.

Yes, you do, he said. You always know. And you make a choice - and that's where the dreams are, and that's where you kill them. Or not.

Have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? I quoted at him, hoping he couldn't finish the line and knowing in my heart that of course he could.

Let history answer this question, he said, staring into my eyes. You're a good man - his voice was so quiet, but it filled the room - and you should trust that.

I couldn't move by then, nothing but my hands, which I had made into fists by my sides: I'm no Jefferson.

He gave a tiny shrug then, and smoothed his tie down with the side of his left hand. I'm not sure about that, he said. His hands brushed my fists, holding me so gently and turning my hands so that my palms where upward. He put his hands into mine as I opened them, and he smiled at me - that split-second grin he had, all, or mostly, contained in his eyes. And then he kissed me. I was sixty-three years old then, and I have seldom been kissed with such tenderness, before or since. It was something too often hidden in him: his capacity to express love in other than words.

And he loved me, that much I never doubted.

I won't tell you the rest, which would certainly fall under the heading of 'too much information'. But I want you to remember this much about him, and remember that anger can come out of love. And that I couldn't have picked a better friend, or a better voice for the better angels in my brain. And if I forget, which I may do from time to time, you can tell me this story.


End file.
